ASUS M4A785-M questions....

Demrok · Post by **Demrok** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 7:10 pm

Thinking of getting this board and also a Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz...

The board supports DDR2.. but can I use the DDR2 I have with the Phenom II?
Or will it cause me to lose a core or something like that?
I've heard how some boards will do that... cut an X4 to an X3 because

But I have 4 gigs of RAM I still want to use =P

Anyone able to set my mind at ease and tell me if the board + Phenom II X4 AM3 + 4 gigs of DDR2 will actually work?

love you long time =)

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 12:07 pm

No clue why it wouldn't support your memory. It's designed to use DDR2. There's no reason you should lose a core over unsupported memory. You may need to clock the memory down if you have a slower speed, but that's about all.

Demrok · Post by **Demrok** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 1:06 pm

yeah I dunno either, I read something about an ASUS board not supporting the 4th core until you did some bios updates and such. But I just wasn't sure if AM3 absolutely needed DDR3.. even tho I know this board uses DDR2.

Done as much research as I think I can lol, but of course, I come to all the good people of PCA to see what's what for real

So that's probably going to be my next upgrade. the Phenom II 955, the M4A785-M and keep my 4 gigs of DDR2.

Unless somebody has something else to add haha

Thanks for the reply =)

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 1:53 pm

You may have been reading about people trying to unlock the 4th core of the 3 core processors. I have heard about needing BIOS updates to do that on some boards. I've also heard of AM2 boards not supporting the AM3 processors, but your board is known to support that processor (which is a very nice processor by the way, darn good performance vs. price ratio).

Nope, actually, most AM3 boards don't even support DDR3 yet. Apparently, there's no real performance difference between the two on AMD boards (not much on Intel boards either).

Demrok · Post by **Demrok** » Wed Jan 20, 2010 10:24 pm

wicked man, I think you are spot on
I do believe I was thinking unlocking the 4th core, not sealing it away haha

that's all good to hear, next pay check should be a nice bonus =)
So I'll def be picking these things up!

Thanks for the reassurance

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Thu Jan 21, 2010 9:58 am

No problem. I've been trying to convince myself not to switch back to AMD myself (hard to deny the value). But I'm already in too deep with Intel. I'll just wait till there's a Phenom III or something.